


His First Kiss

by Dawnlit_Waters



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Crossdressing, Disguise, First Kiss, Flashbacks, Gotham Academy, Haly's Circus, M/M, Pre-Slash, Slash, Undercover, Undercover as a Couple, actually somewhere between the two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-14
Updated: 2017-08-14
Packaged: 2018-12-15 07:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11801310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dawnlit_Waters/pseuds/Dawnlit_Waters
Summary: Dick Grayson recounts his first kiss to his classmates.





	His First Kiss

“What about you, Dick?”

Upon hearing his name out of blue, Dick pulls down the hem of his undershirt with a bit too much force out of haste.

Thank goodness no one took notice of him before he managed to put on at least one layer of clothing. He has been tactically evading other boys’ line of sight since he re-entered the locker room, meanwhile trying to get dressed quickly as possible. This extra measure of discreetness is called for because his left flank currently bears two palm-sized bruises, both resulted from being thrown against a shipping container by a False Facer at Port Adams last Friday night. Dick covered them up well this morning, but the hot spray of his post-PE shower has partly washed off the supposedly water-proof cosmetics, rendering the purplish skin underneath glaringly visible. _Shouldn’t have switched to this new foundation/concealer set, even though it does provide a more natural matte finishing_. Dick suppresses the urge to cringe at his own thought. By now he probably processes more expertise in hiding skin blemishes than ninety-nine percent of the student body at Gotham Ladies’.

“Pardon?” he asks, uncertain about what the question refers to. He is only vaguely aware that the small cluster of his classmates to his right has been discussing girls, an item high on the list of most popular topics among fourteen-year-old boys, up there with sports, video games, electronic products, and cars.

“Larry’s been telling us about how he got to the first base with Billie St. Simon.” Philip Smythe explains with a smirk.

“And we wondered what the first time was like for you.” Adds Gabriel Hesselink.

“Oh that...” Dick drawls, as if trying to invoke some dramatic effect, buying himself a second or two to think his answer over.

He spends half a breath entertaining the idea of telling them it has not happened yet, only to discard it on the ground that the boys likely will not believe him, and even if they do, the question is bound to come up again in future. He would rather get it over with now than dealing with the unwanted inquisitiveness twice, having no choice but shying away from the truth both times. He loathes lies, especially if they are unnecessary.

“So there was this wedding.”

-

Earlier in the year, as a part of the celebration of the quadricentennial anniversary of Gotham, Mayor Grogan declared he would personally solemnize a number of marriages at the City Hall. In the face of his flowery rhetorics of humbly serving the people, sharing and spreading the joy of life and such, many Gothamites with their marrow-deep cynicism saw it as nothing more than a PR opportunity to boost his declining popularity for the midterm elections. To the Russian mafiya, it was also an opportunity for something fouler. The intelligence Batman and Robin intercepted indicated Yuri Dimitrov was exasperated by Grogan’s most recent and so far the biggest under-the-table deal with the Italians, and planned to assassinate the mayor while he was inside the Gotham City Marriage Bureau, an office easier to infiltrate compared to Grogan’s usual whereabouts.

Despicable as Grogan was, he should not die at the hands of gangsters. The Dynamic Duo needed to protect the crook regardless of their contempt for his blatant corruption. To complicate the situation on the technical aspect as well, this operation did not fit the profile of your run-of-the-mill lurking-in-the-shadow-waiting-to-pounce type of protection mission: the wedding chamber was barely two-hundred square feet, with small, narrow windows and narrower ventilation openings; the layout rendered lying in ambush infeasible inside the room, and impractical outside it. To be in the proximity of their protectee during attack and minimize collateral damage, they had to hide in plain sight.

The assassination was set to take place at ten o’clock sharp. Batman had secured the three consecutive time slots for civil marriage ceremonies between 9:30 and 10:45 so as to reduce interference. The first couple would fail to show up, and they would disguise as the second, tying the knot between 9:55 and 10:20.

On their “big day”, Bruce left at dawn to surveil the running of the Marriage Bureau and make last-minute adjustments, leaving Dick in the capable hands of Alfred. With the professional ease of an experienced stage actor, the butler-cum-modern-fairy-godmother transformed him into a radiant, blushing bride with the help of a padded bodysuit, a high neck halter wedding dress (chosen specifically to accommodate his Adam’s apple), an auburn real hair wig, matching accessories, and makeup. Afterwards, the English polymath took up the role of for-hire chauffeur, delivering him to the designated meeting spot in front of the City Hall in one of the least conspicuous members of the Wayne automobile squad.

-

“Who’s the girl?”

“Someone I’d never seen.”

-

Both Bruce and he adopted a new identity for the mission. The groom was Roger Percival Blakeney, an AP English teacher. Between the extra workload brought by deranged villains who relished in upsetting the applecart of large-scale celebratory events, and the preparation for his placement examination at Gotham Academy (knowing what to show was a way subtler art than showing what one knew), Dick never got around to have a look at Bruce’s Blakeney disguise in person in advance.

-

“What did she look like?”

“Blond hair, green eyes...very smart-looking _,” not so much in the sense that he dressed stylishly as his air and bearing exuded bookish intelligence._

-

Blakeney cut a quaint figure against the Gotham street scene. The bespectacled man was holding the handlebars of an old-fashioned black bicycle with nervous hands. The tip of the first three fingers on the right one had a faint bluish gray hue, semi-permanently stained with ink. In the wicker basket attached to the bicycle’s front sat a worn leather messenger bag.

A fish out of water that was bucolic, cloistered prep school campus.

-

“Lean, and rather tall.”

-

The dark charcoal pinstriped fabric and the calculated bagginess of his mid-range Brooks Brothers three-piece, together with his unassertive posture, made Blakeney’s physique appear noticeably less muscular than Bruce Wayne’s. In spite of his affected scholar’s rounded shoulders, the man stood at 6’1—the Clark Kent method of spine compression was not for everyone.

-

“Taller than you?” Laurence Whitehead teases, resting his elbow Dick’s shoulder.

“Hey!” Dick narrows his eyes and pushes him away, as though the verbal jab hurts his ego.

“Alright, alright. Was she pretty?”

“Comely for sure.”

Objectively speaking, Roger Blakeney was indeed quite easy on the eye, only that...he was too far from Bruce’s regular self to strike a chord with Dick’s aesthetics. That said, given this is ultimately the basic point of disguise, he really cannot find in himself any negative opinion toward the dreamy, sensitive man-of-letters look.

“How did it begin with you two?”

“We met each other amid everything going on.”

-

White Mercedes cleanly parked, Alfred got out and opened the door for him, or Elaine Margaret Griffiths the student of circus history (half the truth is often a great lie). Capturing his subtly arched left eyebrow beneath chauffeur’s cap and the wry twitch of his mouth, Dick returned an apologetic smile. Poor Alfred, having to take part in this sham when he had been dreaming about seeing his charge happily enter into matrimony for so long.

Having waded through a swarm of tourists and a congregation of affordable housing protesters, Blakeney approached him, offering his hand. Dick placed his French-manicured digits in the man’s palm and stepped onto the sidewalk.

-

“And?”

“And we said hello.”

-

“Hello dear.” Blakeney pulled him into his arms and planted a kiss on his hair.

-

Physical contact has always been a rare commodity in the Wayne household, and it has grown even rarer after he left home-schooling behind and entered a typical—if the most prestigious private institution of secondary education for male students in Gotham counts as “typical”, that is—school. Dick understands Bruce’s intention of allowing him more space and is very much grateful, but the man executes the idea in a manner so literal that can be frustrating from time to time. It is not like a pat, a hug or a cuddle here and there would diminish one’s maturity; otherwise, from the ringmaster to roustabouts, from clairvoyants to candy butchers, no one at Haly’s would ever be old enough for first grade.

-

Greeting back lovingly, Dick savored the hug, undeterred by the parts that felt “off”: Blakeney smelled more citric than Bruce wearing his daily cologne, with a hint of old book scent lingering on his skin; the man’s hands ventured slightly lower than usual, resting on where the bodysuit’s hip padding started; satin kitten heels increased Dick’s height by roughly two inches, making his forehead almost collide with the groom’s chin—jawline moderately altered by silicone prosthetics, still chiseled nonetheless—when he drew him close.

As for the kiss, sadly all Dick felt was a light pressure owing to the wig between his own hair and Blakeney’s lips.

Those lips then moved to his ear, whispering, “No abnormal behavior among the bureau personnel, apart from several marriage officiants not on duty today being present. Two new bodyguards are included in the security setup for Grogan. The 6’4 one of Mongolian descent has a two-year under-documented gap in his career. Keep an eye on him especially. The mayor’s car will arrive around fifteen minutes late due to traffic.”

Dick feigned a glowing grin as he listened, giving the passerby the impression that the groom was showering his bride with the sweetest compliments.

“Oh, _Roger_!” He exclaimed in a love-drunk voice after the man finished briefing with another kiss to his fake updo _. Roger Percival Blakeney. Ha._

-

“We hanged out for a while. You know, talking and stuffs.”

-

A phone rang as Dick crossed the threshold of Marriage Bureau, Blakeney’s hand on the small of his back. That was Alfred calling in as the father of the first bride scheduled to marry today to cancel the appointment, citing food poisoning from the bachelorette party as the reason.

Bruce and he settled on the most advantageous spot on the long sofa bench in the main hall, spying the hustle and bustle around them while acting all lovey-dovey. He tilted his head a little and leaned against Bruce’s shoulder, so that he could watch the coming and going near the marriage chamber from underneath his mascaraed eyelashes. Bruce wrapped an arm around his shoulders and rested his cheek on the top of his—the wig’s; Dick’s annoyance over the inconvenient thing had grown deeper and deeper with every passing minute—wavy locks, angling himself to cover both the main and the side entrances. Every now and then they traded information in cooing murmurs, wearing a tender expression that could not have been more incongruous to the content of their conversation.

-

“Come on, get to the exciting part!”

“We found a more or less secluded spot...”

-

When the time came, they walked toward the marriage chamber at the end of the hallway, passing through the mayor’s security team, crowds of reporters, and numerous spectators, some of whom were GCPD officers in plainclothes. Flashes of dozens of professional cameras and smartphones accompanied their every step; it was not unlike attending certain public events with Bruce, except his arm was interlocked with the man’s.

A bodyguard—not the Mongolian one Bruce had warned him about—closed the wooden door after them, informing the press that they would be able to take pictures of the mayor and the couple later when the three emerged from the wedding chamber in about twenty minutes.

They would not. Dick did not feel sorry for them though, since they were in line for something lead story-worthy.

On their side of the door stood only four people: the bride, the groom, Grogan, and a bureau clerk who would help the couple with documents and serve as their witness. The clerk was unarmed, untrained in combat, and a good six inches too short to fit the description of the hitman. _Can’t be him._ Dick turned to his partner.

With his beaming appearance that screamed “I’m the happiest man in the world” intact, Bruce managed a look that conveyed his agreement with Dick’s judgment.

-

“Hands got involved.”

-

Having signed a stack of papers with the loopy signature he had practiced for an hour the previous night, Dick stood in the middle of the room facing Bruce, hands joined with his (sporting writer’s callus not only from holding pens but also chalk—utter dedication to details). From the corner of his eye, he could see Grogan’s unctuously saccharine smile and the clock on the wall that read thirty-two seconds to ten.

The attack could happen at any moment.

“You are about to enter a union which is honorable and serious...”

Scanning their surroundings, wary of every minute sound and movement, Dick barely registered Grogan’s croaky speech that dragged on. If not for Bruce’s well-timed squeeze of his fingers, he would have failed to notice it was his turn to say the wedding vow.

They reached the exchange of rings undisturbed at thirteen and a half minutes past ten--so much for this “Deadline” guy holding up punctuality as his essential brand identity.

-

“Things escalated.”

-

“...vested in me as Mayor in and for the City of Gotham, I, Peter Edward John Grogan, do hereby join...”

The wedding was about to end. The hitman had not yet shown up. Dick began to mentally go through steps of the backup plan made for this specific situation, striving to retain his level of alertness in the meantime.

“...may seal your vows with a kiss.”

Grogan’s final words brought Dick’s brain working at full speed to an abrupt halt. The line was not supposed to be there! Even though Bruce and he had speculated that they would not make it this far, the man had made sure to pick a version of the bureau’s standard wedding ceremony script that did not contain the “you may kiss” part when booking the reservation. The loosening of Bruce’s grip that lasted for a split second betrayed the unnerving fact that _he_ was equally, if not more, astonished by the announcement.

_The show must go on the show must go on the show must go on must go on must go on go on—_

Fight. Flight. Freeze. Dick fell into a trance that somehow embodies all three. Driven by the showman’s instinct to continue performing no matter what that had been drilled into him since his earliest days, his body took action by its own accord, leaning toward his “newly wedded husband”. His interior, on the other hand, was as frantic as his exterior was collected. Recovered from temporary paralysis, thoughts in his now spinning head cut loose under adrenaline-induced hyperactivity. In a strange, detached way, he was aware of each and every one of them at once, observing them running wild almost like an onlooker. One fragment of his consciousness could not help but marvel at the rapidly changing expressions lapping onto one another in Bruce’s eyes behind contact lenses and browline glasses. Shock, confusion, dismay, dread, more shock when he noticed his partner was edging nearer, panic, stoic blank as he forced himself to snap out of it, concentrated determination during his desperate search for a perfect solution, reluctant resignation as he realized it did not exist, frustration, hesitation...

Dick found himself pouring every scrap of reassurance he could muster into his own gaze.

It was beyond him how the vast majority of people deemed that Bruce had the emotional range of a brick wall. Heroes and villains alike often regarded the scowl as a permanent feature of Batman’s face. Tabloids compared darling Brucie to Ken doll. Socialites and businessmen who knew marginally better than rag wordsmiths dismissed Wayne as someone shrouding himself in studied suavity to create the illusion that he was not the blandest life form on the planet.

 _Why can’t you see? Feelings, moods, sentiments, he has them all. Mask or cowl, metaphorical or not, never is firmly in place enough to warrant the inhuman reputation of his. He sympathizes with criminals resort to dishonest living caused by the lack of opportunity or acceptance. He values and seeks, sometimes even consciously, genuine bond with other beings. He appreciates the joy of life—mostly from afar but still—while detesting deplorable pleasures derived from immorality. Yes, he guards his true self with exceptional effort, but there have always been cracks in his armor waiting to reveal themselves to a pair eyes that_ looks _. Reach out and trace your fingertips along them; you’ll feel the warmth seeping through. Stop at the one across his chest and hold your breath; sense the beating of his heart—a strong, steady, scarred heart that was every bit as real and mortal as everybody else’s—coming from beneath._

_He is a scared, tormented child who has lost his parents to senseless violence. He is a stalwart hero sacrificing his well-being to save others from undeserved tragedy. He is a man of flesh and blood. He is—_

_He is close._

Dick woke up from his spontaneous contemplation fueled by raw escapism out of nervousness ( _focus on anything and everything just not what’s coming!_ ) to the reflections of a young woman in white inside a pair of olive-colored irises so lifelike that they felt unnatural.

_Elaine Gri—no, Elaine Blakeney, your groom is about to kiss—_

_Me._

A tremble ran up his spine. Undercover notwithstanding, a kiss was a kiss was a kiss. Dick was presently in shortage of brainpower to dissociate himself from the sensation of Bruce’s breath on his very own lips that were inexperienced with intimate touch.

Those two pools of muted, heathered green each trapping an image of him expanded and expanded. At the edge, a sliver of clear, sharp blue—

_!..._

Warm, dry, a delicate balance between smooth and coarse, Bruce’s lips felt like...sawdust.

The familiar texture soothed his frayed nerves.

Dick had never associated Bruce with those tiny pieces of wood carpeting the circus ground. Come to think of it, however, the comparison seemed curiously adequate.

In sawdust circle he had learned to walk, to run, to jump, to flip, and eventually fly. Sawdust was an inherent part of him. By virtue of the sheer amount of his sweat, tears, and blood that had dripped onto and absorbed by it, he was an inseparable part of sawdust too. Likewise, Bruce and he were a part of each other—Bruce first saw his past self in he because of shared fate; he then saw his future self in Bruce thanks to mutual aspirations. Sawdust had witnessed his highest high and lowest low at Haly’s, silent, reliable, supporting him, keeping him from slipping. Bruce, man and bat, did the same at the manor, in the cave, and on the streets, albeit ever so slightly more vocal. He rolled in the sawdust covering the center ring after breaking the record of the youngest flier to ever catch the Quad. He plunged himself into Bruce’s embrace after capturing Zucco and delivering the scum to justice.

Sawdust made him feel at home. So did Bruce.

-

“Earth to Dick.” Phil waves his hand in front of his eyes. “Don’t just relive your sweet memories in your head! You gotta _tell_ us what happened next!”

“...Plenty of action in a short period of time.”

-

As the kiss went on, his head lolled against Bruce’s left hand cradling his nape.

BOOM!

Explosive Batarangs hidden under dress shirt cuffs and miniature impact smoke grenade nestled in bridal bouquet took effect a barely measurable fraction of time ahead of a gunshot.

Amidst of a thick pall of grey smoke and dust from broken plaster ceiling, Dick tackled Grogan to the ground. He lost a shoe mid-movement but could not care less, turning around immediately to join Bruce in fighting Deadline. They were on a tight schedule—hordes of security personnel were right outside the room, they needed to extricate themselves before bodyguards and police officers could get a solid hold on the situation.

-

“Go on!” The boys press in unison.

“Act of wrongdoing got caught. Put to an end by the physically imposing morally upright.”

Dick schools his expression to be in accordance with the collective cry of disappointment.

-

Under twenty seconds, Bruce and he had subdued Deadline, neutralized him, and slipped away from the center of chaos, concealing themselves with smoke screen like how they blended into night.

-

“What a shame!”

“Bad luck. Should have been more careful too.” Dick concludes.

-

In post-operation analysis Bruce and he pieced together the incident from Deadline’s point of view.

Crammed into the narrow space between the structural ceiling and the dropped ceiling, he evaded the detection of Batman’s thermal imager by donning a revolutionary insulating bodysuit akin to fire proximity suit in effectiveness but significantly more compact and flexible. Safely hiding above the target, aiming at him through the fretted canopy of the antique pendant light, he could have done a clean job on time, had he been blessed with luck. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending which side one’s on—because of his aversion to Grogan, Dick subconsciously chose to stand a couple of feet farther from the officiant’s podium than most brides, unintentionally blocking the bullet trajectory. Nevertheless, bad luck only accounted for the delay of the assassination, not the failure. Deadline could have still finished the task if he had been less impetuous. When Dick moved his head during the kiss, he allowed the mercenary a partial view of the mayor. Instead of waiting for a clear line of fire, the hitman rashly readjusted his aiming angle (Dick retracted his earlier misjudgment—the guy did have proven to be extremely concerned about sticking close to the time schedule). His movement caused the pendant light to swing minutely. The tomographic motion detection system Batman had installed around the chamber beforehand promptly spotted the suspicious sway.

-

“So that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Being disrupted like that...Sounds like it sucks big time. Sorry man.” Phil offers sympathy with a pat on Dick’s back.

“Yeah,” Gabe agrees, “hope it doesn’t leave you with trauma or anything.”

“That hardly counts as traumatic.” Dick shakes his head. “Not really. I don’t think so.”

For real, the kiss does not bother Dick. Between the moments when the initial shock-panic wore off and when alarm popped up on the interface of his bionic contact lenses, it was quite...nice, in a similar vein with other types of physical contact he has always been fond of, a slightly more affectionate variation. He has heard others recall how kissing someone made them weak in the knees and dizzy and hot all over and see stars and whatnot. Nothing of that sort happened to him; rather, he felt at ease, that he belonged, that everything was right in the world—way better than those pseudo flu symptoms in his opinion, and overall by no means bad.

If anything, Bruce is the one who sort of got traumatized.

-

Bruce and he relocated to the observation post doubling as a safe room right across the street via underground infrastructure. Having ascertained no one was trailing them, they proceeded to remove their disguise. It turned out that the tight-fitting padded compression bodysuit was not only a pain in the ass to put on, but even more so to take off. Incapable of slipping out of it himself, Dick turned to Bruce.

The man flinched, infinitesimally, yet decidedly evident to well-trained eyes. The response took Dick by so much surprise that it took him several seconds to process what he had witnessed. Now that he paid attention, he discerned a shade of guilt in Bruce’s countenance that clung to his fine features tighter than the state-of-the-art prosthetics did previously.

_He deems himself culpable of something, something that...makes him shun away from helping me change out of disguise? What on earth—_

All of a sudden, Bruce recoiled again, for apparently no reason.

The reality had become surreal. Dick slowly looked around, not sure if he was in a dream. In the mirror behind Bruce that had been placed in a tactical position to reflect the front of the Marriage Bureau, a confused adolescent stared back at him, knitted brows, pursed lips—

_Wait._

Dick sank his teeth in his lower lip and watched Bruce grow increasingly uncomfortable.

“You are troubled by the kiss. Disturbed by it.” He noted. “You hold yourself responsible, believing you’ve...hurt me, somehow. Guilt-ridden, you can’t bring yourself to touch me. Simply noticing my mouth feels awkward now.”

The lowering of Bruce’s eyes gave him all the confirmation he needed.

One should totally have found Bruce’s unreasonably rigid morality absurd, especially considering how readily he allowed himself to kiss and be kissed under fake personas. Even so, Dick did not feel like making the least injurious gibe at the man’s overreaction and borderline hypocrisy. It saddened him to imagine the intensity of the ongoing mental self-flagellation that had Bruce appear so discomposed (by his standard).

“Look at me, Bruce. It’s alright. The kiss was an expedient called for by the mission. It served its purpose of maintaining our cover and helped us accomplish our goal. In all seriousness, I’m okay with it. I truly am. Don’t beat yourself up.” Dick held eye contact with the man the whole time as he spoke, hoping his sincerity would come through.

“...I could tell you were uneasy,” unconvinced, Bruce countered.

“I was more flabbergasted than anything. Caught off guard.” _That, and the kiss was my first._ He left out that part because giving Bruce any more reason to torment himself over was the last thing he wanted. “Who knew they could have made a clerical error there? That’s Gotham City civil service for you, I suppose.”

“It’s... _not_ right.”

“Not worse than what Brucie or Matches or some other false identity of yours does regularly with all kinds of ladies.”

“You shouldn’t equate these two situations.”

“Indeed. I’d argue your kiss with me is more ethical, since I’m an informed and willing participant of your deception, not one of your interchangeable companions entirely kept in the dark about everything.”

“They...” Bruce pressed the heel of his hand against forehead, and then ran the hand through his hair flattened by wig cap. “I’m your _guardian_.” The emphasized last word came forth jagged, as if being forcefully dragged out of the man’s voice box.

“Bruce Wayne is Dick Grayson’s guardian. Out there we are Batman and Robin. We are _partners_ ,” Dick stated in a tone soft and firm.

“Boundary of propriety exists between partners too, and I’ve—”

“We are also friends.”

“That doesn’t negate—”

“Yes it does. Friends have their heart in the right place and are considerate when it comes to each other. I know you didn’t mean me any harm when you kissed me, and as a matter of fact, you didn’t do any harm by kissing me either—blameless in both intention and result. I fail to see why you feel so remorse. Watching you suffer from undue self-reproach is what truly hurts me. As someone who cares about my feelings, could you please stop seeing yourself as being in the wrong?”

Dick had to admit the pleading move fell short of being perfectly fair. To get through that thick head of Bruce’s, sometimes a little flexibility was a measure of necessity.

“I...”

“Try it, Bruce. For me.”

Hesitation flickered in the man’s eyes, but he nodded eventually.

“Attaboy.”

For the first time since their lips touched, the corners of Bruce’s curled upwards.

“Now give me a hand. This thing is suffocating me.” Dick gestured at his bodysuit.

-

“Of course it doesn’t. It’s Dick we’re talking about. Look at how girls ogle at him during joint activities! Whatever burns that might have existed have to be long healed by dozens, if not hundreds, of kisses that followed.”

“Larry, that’s...a bit exaggerating,” Dick protests self-effacingly, wishing they could move on from his love life to some other stuff already.

“Still my point stands. You don’t hang onto that one time when you have wins under your belt. Now, who’s the lucky girl that made you forget?”

 _Why are these guys_ so _nosy?_ _Bruce never mentioned the gossipiness of teenage boys when explaining about the school life at Gotham Academy!_ On top of having run out of kiss-related personal experiences to process and retell for the satisfaction of his peers’ hormone-driven curiosity, he is not in a particularly creative mood, so Dick decides to go for honesty. He does not seek to cultivate an image of himself as a ladies’ man anyway.

“...There isn’t any—”

“Dude. You’re _Bruce Wayne’s_ ward. How come wooing girls is anything but second nature to you?” Gabe wonders with pure disbelief in his wide eyes.

“Well, I’m not him.” Dick shrugs.

Despite the abundance of evidence indicating otherwise, fellow students more often than not assume he is a younger version of Bruce Wayne. Dick has learned to live with this ingrained line of thinking among scions of the most illustrious families in Gotham that conflates one’s personality with one’s pedigree.

There actually used to be a time when he would be glad that people drew a parallel between himself and Bruce. At the peak of his hero-worshipping of Batman, he yearned to become the hero with every fiber of his being. _One day I will be him_ , he would silently vow to the city they protected, as he followed the dark-clad figure into their nightly crusade against crime. At times even one more minute felt like too long a wait, let alone the years that had to pass before his dream could possibly come true.

As those readings on psychology Bruce has assigned him demonstrate, the human psyche is verily an intriguing thing: before he has grown to fill in the cowl and the cape, he grows out of the fixation. Neither the high admiration he holds for Bruce nor the close rapport between them has to any extent diminished, and he still regards championing justice as his true calling—he no longer wants to _be_ Batman is all. Somewhere along the time, the desire of “wanting to be” has metamorphosed into “wanting to be with”: a fundamental element of the appeal of the Dark Knight to him, Dick has come to realize, is after all the fact that Bruce is the man at the core of the bat.

“You should be grateful Dick is a late-bloomer. One less guy to compete with,” Phil chimes in. “Not that it helps you much, seeing how Valerie Delisle turned you down once again last week.”

“I’d have nailed it had you not done me the hugest disservice in human history! What kind of wingman are you?!”

“How could it be _my_ fault? _You_ missed the cue!”

The bickering carries on with no end in sight. Finally out of the spotlight, Dick covertly heaves a sigh of relief. As he laces up his shoes, his consciousness drifts away from school altogether. _Bruce’ll be home for dinner. Alfred’s making Delmonico steak. Nice. And that den of smugglers in the old city, can’t wait to bust it after all these weeks. Oh, Robin’s new armor suit should be ready—no more overly-tight shoulder guard at last! Unrestricted arm movement, how I’ve missed you..._

Thoughts about excitements that await him tonight are still bubbling in his mind as he sets out for the last class of the day.

**Author's Note:**

> I took a little artistic license with the founding date of Gotham. The settlement that later became Gotham City actually came into existence in 1635.
> 
> -
> 
> Thank you for reading! Hope you’ve enjoyed this little fic. As a non-native English speaker without a beta, I apologize for the mistakes in the text in advance. All feedback is greatly welcome. Your encouragement/appreciation/constructive criticism keeps me going. <3


End file.
